Stalkers turn to high-tech techniques

Hidden cameras. GPS trackers. Spyware that allows a person to monitor text messages, incoming and outgoing cellphone calls, or even to remotely activate the phone in order to eavesdrop.

BY HEATHER YAKIN

Hidden cameras. GPS trackers. Spyware that allows a person to monitor text messages, incoming and outgoing cellphone calls, or even to remotely activate the phone in order to eavesdrop.

This is the new world of stalking — the new way for an abuser to monitor his or her victim. This is part of domestic violence in the 21st century.

"We're still playing catch-up. It's a very frightening world," said Kellyann Kostyal-Larrier, executive director of Safe Homes of Orange County, which provides services to victims of domestic violence.

Because it's now common for abusers and stalkers to use tech gadgets to spy on and control their victims, Kostyal-Larrier goes to periodic trainings to keep up with the changing landscape.

"The amount of technology that has changed in just six months is scary," she said,

Cindy Southworth, founder of the Safety Net Technology Project for the National Network to End Domestic Violence, said gadgets are everywhere, and abusers are quick to adopt them.

"Abusers use every tool at their disposal. It's just past of what they do," she said. "They cannot stop themselves from having 24-hour access to the victim."

An intimate-partner abuser doesn't just spy on the victim, she said. "It's about power. So they will call and taunt," rather than keeping what they've learned to themselves, Southworth said. "They have to tell her. That's the nature of power and control."

The spying can be pervasive, and it's not necessarily secret.

In the local Timothy Handel murder case earlier this year, testimony showed that Handel constantly monitored where his girlfriend, Katie Connolly, was and who she was calling.

He checked her car's odometer, timed her drive home from work, had passwords to all of her accounts and computer and phone. And after he killed her, he kept her cellphone, checking the voice mail repeatedly — still trying to control her.

Kostyal-Larrier said she's seen cases where abusers have stuck magnetized GPS devices on the victim's car, in order to track her whereabouts.

She's seen cases where abusers have installed "ghost" programs on a victim's computer, in order to monitor every keystroke, every email, every website visited.

There are programs that allow someone to remotely activate a computer, to turn on the web cam and eavesdrop. Even smartphones can be used against a victim.

"One of the first things we ask vicims: Who paid for your cellphone?" Kostyal-Larrier said.

If an abuser's name is the one on the account, the abuser has authority to access all of the texts, calls and apps. For someone looking for control over another person, Kostyal-Larrier said, "a cellphone is a perfect way to start."

Bureau of Justice Statistics research showed that more than 3 million people were stalked in 2006 — their most recent data year — and that more than a quarter of those victims had been stalked via email or instant messaging or had been electronically monitored.

An analysis of research literature on the issue, published in 2010 by a University of Kentucky researcher with National Institutes of Justice support, found that intimate-partner stalkers are, overall, more likely to be violent, more persistent and more dangerous than non-partner stalkers.

The report, "Research of Partner Stalking: Putting the Pieces Together," also found that abusive partners who stalk — about half to 60 percent of abusers do — are more controlling and more violent than abusers who don't stalk.

There are specialty online retailers dedicated to selling surveillance equipment. They mostly seem unconcerned with small details, such as how the products might be used.

"The law has not caught up with the perpetrators," Kostyal-Larrier said.

However, there are laws on the books that, applied creatively, can be used against tech stalking. For instance, a few months ago, an Orange County man who placed software on his ex's phone that allowed him to listen in on her conversation pleaded guilty to eavesdropping, a felony.